


Drag Shows in the Year 2088

by rebornlover



Series: Time Travel and Gender [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Kenya, Multi, Pride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 13:40:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17002707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebornlover/pseuds/rebornlover
Summary: Our time traveller jumps into the future





	Drag Shows in the Year 2088

When I return to the Nandi County village, they are in the process of preparing for their annual Pride Parade. The town has grown since I visited it last in 1980, as one might have expected, the roads are paved and the town itself now officially a small city. I recognize some of the businesses lining the Main Street, which is still the centre of town, and am perplexed by others. I introduce myself to some of the local tommy boys (Morgan and Baraka 66) as a tourist from Kampala enthusiastic to see a Pride Parade that is not so ‘corporate-friendly’, that prides itself on embracing the ‘true roots’ of Pride. It works, and I am put to work to help with building, sewing, glueing, and all manner of bedazzling.

  
The Kampala Pride Parade, I had learned doing the initial recon when I landed, was one of the largest in East Africa. It had started within my lifetime, an off-shoot of the Ugandan Pride Parades that I read about through Western news sources, often suppressed by the police (Beresford). In the 70 years since (what to my chronological mind is still this year) the East African LGTBQI+ Rights Movement had gained significant grounds backed by a more understanding local population and international support. There are several names and days I run into during my research: rioters and political lobby groups, police arrests and protests.

  
Like some of the Pride Parades I had read about in my own time, the police were not welcomed at Pride. It was the same case in Nandi County Pride which eschewed any government involvement apart from the requisite forms and permits. A lot of the drag kings and queens around me wore faded shirts with the phrases ‘Fuck the Church! Fuck the Government! Fuck the Colonial System!’ emblazoned in bright Red against grainy black and white images of a black woman with her hands cuffed in front of her. They also wore thin slippers and had kikois tied around their waist while they worked. It made me think of all the older women in my life, and smile.

  
I stayed with one of the main Pride organizers’, a drag queen named Chapatti LaBelle, an ode to the American singer. She was the oldest drag queen living in the city and her compound housed several of her daughters and sons. They were known as the House of LaBelle and I learned that they were the brainstormers responsible for the theme of this year’s Parade.

  
‘Balls of America’, in reference to the Drag Balls of the 1970-80s in the African-American gay scene (Livingston). And of course, a bawdy double entendre that made the younger Queens giggle whenever they had the opportunity to tell it to someone. The various costumes and accessories I’m shanghaied into helping prepare all contrast against the normal wardrobes of the house which are filled to bursting with kente cloth and African inspired patterns. Based on the clothes coming out of the various Fashion Houses of Accra (Kploanyi), one young Queen tells me around the pins in her mouth as she used me as a mannequin.

  
They all take delight in this opportunity to wear such retro fashion choices, though I notice that quite a few are wearing fashions that might be more suitable in 2018 than 1970. The day-to-day fashion is more streamlined and efficient here, jeans have stuck around but I notice a lot more fishnets and sharp angles than my last visit. The children of the House LaBelle dress only slightly more conservatively outside of the House than they do inside, even when going to the city centre. There is no pushback while I am there, but I am told about past incidents with drunk men or women or worse the police.

  
When I ask about gender identity, I get a lot of answers. Some of the Queens are trans women or trans men, most of them are gay men. Some of them have more complicated gender identities, they use slang and phrases that slip easily off their tongues but have trouble finding purchase in my mind. In the House LaBelle, it seems like lines and structures around gender roles have collapsed, but I have no clue how much this applies to the rest of the town and I am wary to ask for fear of exposing myself.

  
I was an oddity as the new person in town and so they gathered around me in the evening and asked me for stories. They were disappointed by my lack of interesting or new topics, explained away as a result of my only recent coming out, but I am forgiven by my ability to sit and listen attentively. They told me about the issues they sometimes have with police, who are banned by recent legislation from discriminating against them because of their sexuality and have instead taken to monitoring the local bar for Indecency. Many of them talked about their issues with the local Anglican Church and the pastors’ sermons about the traditional roles of men and women and their ‘perversion’ of these pillars of society.

  
The African Anglican Church had lobbied fiercely against every hard-won concession and victory made by the Gay Rights Movement in the East African trading bloc (Peachey). Every protection for transgender children, every right accorded to same-sex couples, not one victory had been won without driving a bar between the Church and the queer community. Many of the people cast out of their Church communities had turned instead to more traditional religious and cultural communities where they had been met with less open hostility.

  
The second goal of this trip had been to try and find a female husband and their wife. I had been curious about whether the practice would still be a part of the community and how, if in anyway, it would interact with the emerging queer community knowing that the two groups might still consider themselves mutually exclusive (Morgan and Baraka 40-44). I prepared myself for a lot of subtle digging and snooping, and all that preparation went to waste when I happened to stumble upon a wedded pair of performing drag kings on my second morning.

  
Tommy and Bella, who went by the stage names Dro and Dru Bloodborne were gracious enough to explain to me what it was like to live at the intersection of the modern queer community and the Nandi cultural tradition of female husbands. Unlike Patience and Mirembe, they considered their relationship to be primarily romantic. While they had received some pushback from the local chieftain, and the church officials, the tribal elders had instead chosen to sidestep the ‘gay’ issue altogether. Providing support for them under the more politically neutral cause of preventing government interference in a long-standing tradition and marrying the two when it would not have been possible otherwise legally, but on the whole, refusing to become involved in the conflict between the government and the queer community.

  
They knew several other female married couples, and some they confessed privately, where the gender of one or more of the participants was not as concisely communicated. Some of these couples were completely platonic, but they often sympathised with couples such as Tommy and Bella and expressed a solidarity based more around a freedom from more heteronormative structures of marriage and their shared issues with misogyny. In any case, the workload of the house seems to be more equitably distributed by the couple, Bella never kneels to greet Tommy and certainly they both share all the farm duties on the small acreage they own (Oboler 77). Again, this might be influenced by their queer identity.

  
In the end I had to leave the morning of the Parade, making up a story about a suddenly sick relative who needed me to come home and tend to them. I do, however, have some lovely pictures of the face and costume Dru and Dro had convinced me to try in exchange for telling me their story. I will be attaching them below.

**Author's Note:**

> Works Cited
> 
> Beresford, Meka. Ugandan LGBTQ+ activists announce plans for Pride following crackdown. 6 March 2018. 27 November 2018. .  
> Klinken, Adriaan van. Beyond African religious homophobia: How Christianity is a source of African LGBT activism. 20 July 2018. .  
> Morgan, Ruth and Nancy Baraka. "Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men, and Ancestral Wives: Female Same-sex Practices in Africa." Morgan, Ruth and Saskia Wieringa. Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men, and Ancestral Wives: Female Same-sex Practices in Africa. Johannesburg: Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd, 2005. 25-45.  
> Oboler, Regine Smith. "Is the Female Husband a Man? Woman/Woman Marriage among the Nandi of Kenya." Ethnology (1980): 69-88.  
> Paris is Burning. Dir. Jennie Livingston. Prods. Barry Swimar and Jennie Livingston. 1990. Netflix. 01 November 2018.  
> Peachey, Paul. African Anglicans may trigger formal schism of Church at Canterbury meeting. 10 January 2016. News Article. 27 November 2018.  
> The Associated Press in Kampala. Uganda tabloid prints list of top 200 homosexuals. 25 February 2014. .  
> We Met An African Fashion Designer from Accra. Dir. Selorm Kploanyi. House of Nutsu-gah. 2018. Youtube Video.


End file.
